Silk Roads: Culture, trade and

technological exchanges
Silk Roads
• Traditionally, the term “silk road” is used to refer to a road, or roads, between
East Asia and the
Mediterranean, and spanning the center of the Eurasian continent, a region now
known variously as
Central Eurasia, Central Asia, Inner Asia, Transoxiana, and sometimes as the
‘stans (Afghanistan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan).

• It was a German traveler and geographer, Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen (the
uncle of Snoopy’s
nemesis, the “Red Baron” Manfred von Richthofen), who coined the term “silk
road.” Actually, von
Richthofen used the term in both singular (Seidenstrasse) and plural
(Seidenstrassen) in a lecture in 1877
and in his multivolume historical geography, China (1877–1912).

• For him the term referred to routes along which Chinese silk moved from the Han
Empire (206
BCE–220 CE) to Central Asia and from which the Han learned something of western
geography.
Richthofen did not apply the “silk road” concept to times after the Han period.
However, he did discuss
at length other routes in later periods and exchanges of goods other than silk;
moreover, he argued for
the great historical and cultural importance of what he called Handelsverkehr,
denoting commercial
traffic or trade routes.

• Thus, although in different words, the father of the narrow “silk road”
conception was also interested in
the general phenomenon of trans-Eurasian exchanges now encompassed by the
shorthand we know as
the silk road.

• The growth and ambition of Rome helped galvanise Persia itself. Latter benefitted
greatly
from the long distance traffic between east and west, which also served as
Persia’s political
and economic centre of gravity away from north.

• Faced with intense pressures from its neighbours, Persia underwent major
transformations
under the rise of the new dynasty called the Sassanians. It saw. At tightening of
control
over every aspect o the state; accountability was prioritised, with Persian
official issued
with seals to record their decisions, to allow responsibility to be tracked and
to ensure the
accurate reporting of information.

• Producers and traders were arranged into guilds, with allocated specific areas in
etc bazaar.
It made it easier for the inspectors to ensure the quality and quantity standards
were met
and above all to collect tax duties efficiently
• New town were founded, large scale irrigation programmes in Khuzistan and Ira new
undertaken to boost agricultural production, bringing down the food price.

• The shift from the incorporation and towns and territories from the Kushan into
Persia also
allowed for an intensification of trade with the he east.
Major Players in the
Silk Roads
Land, Geography and people

• Geography played a major role in the emergence of the Silk Road.

• tribally organized speakers of Iranian, Turkic, Mongolian, and other languages
maintained a pastoralist economy in steppe, desert, and
mountainareas from the Black Sea in the west to Tibet and Mongolia in the east,
bordering on all the OldWorld’s sedentary agrarian
civilizations.

• The environmental differences between lands inhabited by farmers and herders was
an influential factor in their relationship.
• The taiga’s main contribution to silk-road history has been fur: minks, ermine,
sable, fox, beaver, and other mammals in these northern
forests produce dense, rich fur that has long been in demand across Eurasia.
Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire, traded away
a wedding present of a sable coat to cement the first major political alliance
that propelled him on his road to world conquest.

• In early modern times, global demand for furs drove Russian trappers eastward
across Siberia as far as the Pacific and the frontiers of the
Qing Empire, spurring settlement and control of what is now the Russian far east
justas French and other European trappers penetrated
westward through Canada. Elites in the Qing Empire bought furs from both Siberia
and Canada—the “fur road” thus extended to the
Americas Near rivers, where irrigation is possible, farming on the steppe could
be productive Polities controlling desert routes often
maintained water depots and caravanserais (inns) to help, and profit from,
traveler’s.

• Mountains shield Central Eurasia from the Pacific and Indian oceans; and that,
combined with high pressure over the highlands, assures
that the region gets little rainfall. River systems flowing out of the mountains,
including the Amu Darya (Oxus), Syr Darya (Jaxartes), the
Tarim, andthe Irtysh, were thus the only sources of water for agriculture. The
major cities along the central reaches of the silk road lie
near these river systems. Though of some use for local transportation, the rivers
of Central Eurasia afford no access to the sea. It required
a journey across the mountains into north India (today’s Pakistan) to bring
travellers to the Arabian Ocean, and from there to the Red Sea
and Persian Gulf and on to the Mediterranean. This, rather than overland, was the
most common channel by which East Asian goods
reached Rome and other Mediterranean destinations.
• Mountains shield Central Eurasia from the Pacific and Indian oceans; and that,
combined with high pressure over the highlands, assures that the region gets
little
rainfall. River systems flowing out of the mountains, including the Amu Darya
(Oxus),
Syr Darya (Jaxartes), the Tarim, and the Irtysh, were thus the only sources of
water for
agriculture. The major cities along the central reaches of the silk road lie near
these
river systems. Though of some use for local transportation, the rivers of Central
Eurasia afford no access to the sea. It required a journey across the mountains
into
north India (today’s Pakistan) to bring travellers to the Arabian Ocean, and from
there
to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf and on to the Mediterranean. This, rather than
overland, was the most common channel by which East Asian goods reached Rome
and other Mediterranean destinations.

Proto- Globalisers
Sycthiansn, Xiongnu and Yuezhi
• Conferdarations the nomadic tribes came together to raid and extrort tribute from
or to invade and conquer lands.
• Sycthians were a Proto - Indo— Eupropan (PIE), speaking group as evidenced by the
archaeological and linguistic evidence. After gaining
wheel and wagon technology from the fertile crescent vis the Caucasus, some of
the PIE speakers became the first nomadic herdsmen.

• They spoke an old Iranian language an deer remarkable for presenting a

surprisingly unified cultural horizon from the Black Sea to the Altai
mountains in Mongolia.

• They were pastoralists and warriors; they also oversaw the busy trade from the
Don and Dnieper basins to the black sea, and even supplied
grains to the greeks.

• Xiongnu, arose somehwer later than the Sycthian, in what is modern day North
China and Mangolua and the conquered the territory as far as
Uzbekistan. Thier language was ropanagly Altaic family form which Turkic and
Mongolian tongues would later derive.

• Qin( 221-206 BCW) and Han ( 206-220 BCE) dynasties in Chin engaged in an ion an
fff — an don conflict with the Xiongnu fro 350 years
and events associated with this rivalry helped open the classical easter silk
road. To the keep the Xiongnu out of China’s borders Qin started
the famous great wall.

• When a ruthless prince named Maodun, ruled the Xiongnu, their influence expanded
greatly as they received tributes from the powerful Han
dynasty of China and his successor Lashing went onto smash the Yuezhi, which was
a powerful nomad confederation in Xinjiang and
Northwest China, he fashioned the skull of the Yuezhi ruler as drinking cup and
with their displacement the Xiongnu were able to take
control over the farming oases in the Tarim Basin ( modern Xingjiang ), thus
securing a source of grain, tribute add trade revenue.
• Xiongnu’s sporadic raids led to the Han’s finally took an aggressive stand an
drove than finally out of their
borders.

• Yezhi , are a prime example of how the silk road mingled nomadic and sedentary
people s and cultures over
great distances.

• Displaced from the Chinese Frontier, the the Yuezhi and confederated tribes
evolved by the first century CE into
the Kushan Empire, a state that combined Central Asian nomadic with Persian,
Indian, and Hellenic influences, at
the hub of the Old World land-and-sea trade routes.

• In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great had campaigned into north India and
Central Asia.Kushan rule
extended over the Hellenized city-states left by Alexander in Bactria (today’s
northern afghanistan), as well as
the kingdoms of north India, including the vital trade center of Taxila(northwest
of Islamabad on the Grand
Trunk Road in modern Pakistan) and Mathura farther south.The eastern extent of
their influence at times took in
Khotan and Loulan in the Tarim Basin, where Kushan documents have been found
written in an Indian language
called Prakrit. Kushan coins bore Greek or Kharoshthi script along with images of
their kings, Greek, Persian,
and Hindu gods, and ofthe Buddha.

• Reliable coinage helped Kushan broker commercial exchanges between China,

India,Persia, and, ultimately,
Rome. Kushan became a great patron of Buddhism and promoted the Dissemination of
the faith through Central
Asia, en route to East Asia
Political and cultural changes along the Silk Road
• Great migrations through the silk roads has been argued by the social scientist
Friedrich Taggart were the result of not merely then
barbarian invasions along the Rhine and Danube but also of the Han policies in
China. Especially the Han policies to split the Xiongnu
set tribes in motion across the steppe to Russia who in turn drove other
“barbarian”tribes before them, right up to the Roman frontier in
Europe.

• Teggart’s thesis was a bold attempt at conceiving Big History: to go beyond

individual nations or even empires and the see the global
picture and. Despite it’s shortcomings, the parallels across the contents are
striking, and the mobility of nomadic tribes was such that
major military or political events on one end o the content could conceivably
affect other.

• This was a period of innovation and hybridisation, as new conquered and migrants
adopted and adapted the institutions of the classical
societies. Christianity spread and became institutionalised in Europe and
Byzantium; in China, former nomad regimes like the northern
Wei actively promoted Buddhism and other aspects of Indian culture, launching a
millennium long insemination of Indian into Sinic
civilisation.

• Indian, Central Asian, and Chinese Buddhist monks translated sutras in monastic
centres, including Kulcha in the Tarim basin and
Duncang on the desert route from China to Central Asia.

• Kushan remained in power till mid-third century and were replaced by the a new
tribal confederation, the hepthalites or White Huns.
• White Huns hired the Soghdian merchants to bring silk and other luxuries back and
forth to Persia which had been experiencing its
golden age under the Sassanid rule (224-651). Ruling through the old Achaemenid
and Alexandrian imperial territory in Persia, North
India, and the north of Amu Dara ( Oxus river) in Transoxiana ( Central Asia) the
Persians were in form control of the nexus of both
overland and maritime silk road trade.

• Persian dominance over the trade links also led to the expansion of Persian
language as the lingua franca of the
silk-road commerce and conquests and it remained so even after the Arab
conquests.

• Sixth century saw the rise of the a new nomadic confederation which arose form
the North of China. Th Turks,
an Altaic speaking group, whose power fluctuated over time ultimately succumbed
to the Tang dynasty of
China but their descendants went on create a series of powerful regimes providing
military muscle and
dynamic elites to Persianized Islamic states: Quarakhanids (999-1211), Ghaznavids
(975-1187), Seljuks
(1037-1194), Mamluks( 1240-1517), Delhi Sultanate ( 106-1526), and to even add
more the Ottoman (
1299-1923), Timurid (1370—1500), and Mughal ( 1526-1858). The shared common
political background and
elite culture proved a major factor in silk-road connectivity.
• On the Western end the Byzantium, engaged with the silk road in order to
circumvent Sassanian Persia as a
source silk yarn.

• China was unified in this period, first by Sui (589-618) and then by the Tang
dynasty (618-930). Tang period
saw an expansion of the Chinese territory and it close and complex relationship
with the Turks contribute dto
its cosmopolitanism: The Tang capita;, Chang’an ( Modern Xi’an) was home to
communities of monks and
merchants - Christian , Buddhists, Manichean, Muslim from various parts of Asia.

• Cultural influence of the Tang period was deeply imprinted in the language,
literature, philosophy, music and
political institutions of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
Migration, Plagues,
Horses and Wine:
Technological and
Cultural
Dissemination on the
Silk-roads

Migration and Plagues

• As the last glaciers retreated about 17,000 years ago, the peoples of Eurasia
diversified into distinct though not isolated linguistic and cultural
communities: the different old-world civilisations.

• Linguist and archaeologists tell sis about the westward movement of the Proto-
Indo- European(PIE) speakers into the deep steppe once they
domesticated horses and adopted wagons. Scythian’s whom Herodotus describes were
originally of western Eurasian lineage, as their Iranian
language suggest.

• The main direction of the first migratory waves during the millennia after the
‘neolithic revolution seems to have been form west to the east.
Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region look “European” sharing the western European
genetic marker, names in Greek and Indian sources
suggest that some individuals in the region when alive, spoke the language
Tokharian, an early version of PIE.

• Ancient remains from Kazakhsthan have revealed an almost half-and-half mix of

western Eurasian haplogroups, along with some Indian
associated haplogroups. These groups probably rolled back after the westward
expansion of proto-Xiongnu, perhaps followed by the turks and
the mongols.

• Migration brought with it not only the benefits of cultural exchange, trade and
commerce it also brought conflict, violence and understated
biological epidemics. The mongol conquest of Eurasia was an example of this
genetic legacy. It was the assistance of the Mongols to Yersina
pestos: the bacterium that cause plague while attacking the city of Kaffa in 6th
Crimea in 1346, by catapulting corpses of plague victims into the
city to speed the siege along. From Kaffa the infected rats, fleas and people
were conveyed by the Italian merchants to the Mediterranean and
western Europe. In Europe black death killed one Thord of the population; it also
devastated Iran, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa, especially the
port cities and trade centres were hit really hard.

• It was believed that the Mongols unintentionally brought plague from southwest
China to Europe, in the process creating permanent reservoir of
rte diseases in the snug burrows of the marmot and other rodent population sof
the central Eurasian steppes, where fleas and plague bacteria
could survive winters. The plague in this view was a pandemic brought about by
first globalisers.
• Smallpox (variola) one of the deadliest diseases seems to have originated on the
Eurasian continent, probably from a rodent virus that jumped species. It
afflicted
people in Egypt and India from the second millennium BCE, whence it spread
elsewhere on eth continent, scarring and blinding those it did not kill.

• As a “crowd disease”, it was endemic in many densely populated areas. Thus the
nomads who frequented town and cities and had no prior immunity to it paid a
great
price.

• The prevalence of this disease in the Eurasian continent also sees, the first
systematic
efforts at inoculation to protect against smallpox occurred in states with roots
in
Eurasian steppes: the Ottosrdman ad Qing empires. We know. For a fact that there
was
a great interchange of medical personnel and information between China and
Persia
under the Mongol Empire.

The Horse
• The horse along with dogs might be one of the most well respected and loved
animal among humans but back in the
early stages of survival after the ice age, horses were game, either hunted or
raised before being eaten.

• While cattle and Sheep had been domesticated, horses remained wild and sometime
after 4800 BCE people
successfully bred a stallion with captive mares. The geneticists tell us that all
domestic horses in the world today are
descendants of that one male. First domestic horse were kept in herds for meat
and probably milk.

• The rise of the chariot cemented their strategic an military importance although
the chariot itself lost its military utility
in the first millennium BCE. Horses became part of the royal culture of the
steppes as representatives of power, virility,
or nobility, with Herodotus writing that one Scythian royal burial with a
sacrifice of fifty steeds.

• China’s relationship with northern steppe peoples and the silk road centred on
the horse as such as on silk. Like the
middle east, southern Persia, , or India, most of China is poorly suited to
raising horses, and stocks needed to be
continuously replenished form the Mongolian steppes and Tibetan Plateau.

• Horse related sports such as Polo, “The Sport of Kings” as dubbed by the British,
was developed in Persia and reached
China via oases of Xinjiang and from China passes on to Korea and Japan. Like
chess, frame-story fables, and the lute,
polo is an example culture emanating from etc Persian and Indian centre to both
European and East Asian silk-road
peripheries.
The Wine
• The case of development of alcoholic beverages demonstrates both convergence and
diffusion. Egyptians who depicted
drinking and alcoholic beverages on tombs and temple paintings believed that
intoxication facilitated communion with
the dead and with gods.

• Mesopatamians drank wine as well,China developed alcoholic drinks from grains and
thus a kind of beer. Alcohol was
critical in the ritual sacrifices to ancestors, as well as bring the living
together.

• Grape vine though was not universal and its eventual ubiquity across Eurasia is a
product of the oil road diffusion.
Similar to the westward diffusion of sericulture which started in China,
viniculture began in western Eurasia and moved
eastwards. Wine finds evidence in greek, culture, the Persians as Herodotus tells
us used to deliberate on important
matters drunk and would decide the next day whether to implement that decision.
If they happened to decide on
something first while sober, they would reconsider it while drunk.

• Kushan had their wine from the Greco roman dele krater vessels and imported its
in amphorae via ports in what is now
Pakistan.

• Wine was so popular in China that poets sung praises about wine.
• Christian cultures also became the preserve of the viniculture. Throughout their
western Roman provinces, Christian
monasteries maintained the tradition and technology of wine making in order to
have wine for the mass, the eastern
church used it for Eucharist. Like some early Buddhists and ancient Egyptians,
both western and eastern Christianity
recognised that the numinous aspect of wine and used iy to symbolise and enhance
worshipers’ connection to god and
each other.

• Islam prohibited the use of wine as it is an agent of intoxication and sometimes

treated
as a central tenet of the faith. However, these rules have been interpreted in
various
ways n different places in different times.

• In both Persian and Arabic poetic literature, classical poetic genres extolling
love and
wine survived after Islamisation, especially in the writings of mystical Sufis
who
equated the amorousness and ecstasy imbued by wine with the longing for union
with
God and spiritual transcendence.

• Despite the fact that China is part of the rice culture, the northern China
preferred
hard breads made from wheat. Thus the great debate in cuisine of where did the
dumplings originate from, known as Dango in Japan, HerrgottsbescheiBerle( little
god cheaters ) in Swabia, Mandu in Korea, pelmei in Russian and other Slavic
 languages and as many names as many cultures. Altaic languages all use some
version
of the word manti.The debate goes on whether the Marco Polo brought pasta from
China to Italy or the other way around.
Technology along the Silk-Road
• Horses and Silk are closely associated with the Eurasian elites. Horses and
elites represent the essence of steppe and sown,
the former embodying the martial strength of the Central Eurasian nomads, the
latter symbolising the soft , sensual life of
the urbanised elites of the Eurasian rimlands.

• The agrarian lands need for transport and cavalry mounts was complemented by the
nomads demand for textiles, especially
fine silks, which could cover legitimacy and stuff, and help nomad elites secure
their followers’ support or to be resold in
profit. This. Contrast and complementarity was a key driver of silk- road
history.

• Legend attribute the development of sericulture to Xi-Li g, wife of the

mythological Chinese progenitor, the Yellow
Emperor.

• Ancient Greeks and Roman understood the term silk to come form a land and people
called Seres- the source of which
term, linguist have argued is non other than the Chinese word for silk ( today
pronounced as si).

• It is not primarily as a consumer product that Silk moved west , however, but
rather as an instrument of imperial policy.
• By the sixth century, it was not piece gods but silk floss (thread) that was
being sold on the east-west continental and sea
routs via India. Best pieces were stained purple with a dye produced form the
shells of a Mediterranean mollusk in the
Phoenician posts of Sidon and Tyre ( modern day Lebanon).
• China adopted from India, by imperial decree, the technique for producing refined
sugar from cane.
• Though silk is what the silk-road is known for the greatest impact of the
technology transfer from the
silk-roads was the craft of paper making. It revolutionised the world in ways
which have echos till the present.

• The invention of paper is credited to Cai Lun in the second century BCE in China.
Used first to wrap things an
later for writing.

• Buddhism and Chinese civil service examination ( which relied on the candidates’
knowledge of the Chinese
classics) helped spread paper use to neighbouring lands, with Korea and Japan
adopting it early followed by
Vietnam. Paper came to India early through the Chinese missionaries, its use did
not catch up until the 12th
century, may be because of the humid climate and teeming insect life made paper
vulnerable as a medium for
religious texts.

• After the Battle of Talas between the Tang forces and Arabs, as recorded in the
book of Tha’ alibi’s eleventh
century Book of Curious and Entertaining information, mentions that the craftsmen
among the Chinese
captives opened the first paper mills in Samarkand.

• Medical technology also transferred through the Silk roads, the theory of “humor”
or as it is called in
Ayurveda dosha, being resultant of the food one ingests thus the categorisation
of food based on their
“humors” is shared by ancient Greco-Roman, Indian, Chinese, and Islamic medical
traditions.

• Military technology such as the chariot, European counter weight trebuchet ( a

kind of
catapult), gunpowder changed the course of history of warfare.

• Especially the gunpowder, a chine invention whose early formulation is described

in a
Doaist text from 850 CE. Use of gunpowder also contributed to a common pattern of
political consolidation across Eurasia, with centralisation of power in
monarchies
including the Muscovites in Russia and Siberia, the Ottoman Empire, Safavids in
Iran,
the Mughals in India - states often dubbed “gunpowder empires”- as well as
Tokugawa
Japan and ming China.
Arts along the Silk Roads
• Indian folklore travelled far and wide along the silk road, Two among them were
the Jākata, a set of 547 folktales contained with the
Trpitika and the Panchatantra. Jākatas were translated and adapted into Chinese
in 251 CE by a Buddhist monk, Kang
Senghui. Jākata tales such as the Jackal and the Crow were adapted in Aesopian
version, “The Fox and the Crow,” and then passed on
in Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables and other retellings.

• Tales from the Jākata, made their way into European literature through
translations into Persian, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well
as Latin and Greek.

• Panchatantra was translated by 570 CE into Persian and in the eighth century
into araboc as Kalilahwa Dimnah, the
arabic translations became source for translations into medieval European
vernacular languages as the Fables of Bidpai.

• The frame-story structure itself was widely imitated: in the Arabian Nights
tradition, for example , nested stories are told nightly
by Sharzād to her murderous husband. Later Boccaccio’s Decameron and, Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales are structured similarly.

• Musical instrument of lute, the ancestor of modern guitar was first found in
ancient Mesopotamia and probably was brought to the
Egyptians by the Hyksos. The Greeks acquired it later and called it pandoura.

• In visual arts the diffusion of halo appears prominently. Its appearance in

Buddhist and, a little later, Christian iconography, and even
Mughal book illuminations suggests a Eurasian connection, which scholars say
arises from a common source in the Iranian tradition.

• Style known as qinghua ci, was developed in China, is another case of

continental cross fertilisation. The pigment used to produce
intense blue in ceramics come from the west, from the cobalt mined in Persia
and exported to Tang China, where it was known as “Muslim
blue.” The use of white and blue later transferred back to the west through
Safavids in Persia and imitated frequently along the Silk Road.
• Silk Road as conduit for transmission of faiths. Christianity, Buddhism, and
later
Islam.

• This was a time when societies were highly receptive to explanations for
everything
from the mundane to the supernatural, and when faith offered solutions to a
multitude
of problems .

• Struggle between faiths was highly political. The equation was simple as it was
powerful: a society protected and favoured by the right goda, thrives; those
promising
false idol sand empty promises suffered.

• Ideas ere blended together from a range of sources to form a lowest common
denominator that would appear to as many as possible.

• Along with faith, trade, technology and arts, silk roads still survive in new
configurations of the contemporary world order with less porous, lucid boundaries
as
in past.